I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:
— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;
every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”
Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”
“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.
Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.
I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.
Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.
It’s been years since I actively used Friendica, but AFAIK the project has always had some form of “circles” that you can choose to share individual posts with? I don’t know if it’s been streamlined to translate into federation, though.
I believe people have a right to make their own choice.
And yet you argue against the jointhefediverse curator’s choice not to list whatever goes against their convictions?
As mentioned in another reply, Soapbox is an example of a Fediverse server software that often goes unmentioned because the developer is a giant MAGA hat. As the meme goes, they’re the same picture.
Do I? You seem to enjoy pedantic hairsplitting, but I fail to see where you’re going with this.
I agree that ideally the concept of “main instances” is beside the point in a federated network. Let’s call them “flagship” or “onboarding instances” then, the initial ones set up by developers as proof of concept that usually get the most traction by way of being open for registrations the longest.
I think it’s disingenuous to classify the decision to omit Lemmy from a list of fediverse software as “a spat”, though. Bringing it up again 1½ years later probably fits the bill better.
Well, horrible genocide apology takes, TBF. I didn’t mean to downplay the gravity of the points they bring up in the archived mastodon thread.
Do most people go to jointhefediverse, though? Honest question, I don’t know the site’s traffic stats vs fediverse.to or fediverse.party (which both show up way above jointhefediverse in my duckduckgo search). It’s not like an authoritative index or search engine blackballed Lemmy, it is literally about a single grassroots site.
In the encyclopedic sense, you’re right. In this context that I replied to, however, censorship had a negative connotation, and my response spoke to that rather than the formal meaning.
I don’t know where people get the idea that censorship is an inherently negative thing.
Right, and I do note that you talk about jointhefediverse “suppressing” Lemmy — another negative connotation.
I’ll maintain that, no, they are just leaving it out. Again, that is the privilege of a list curator. Nobody else have a say in what and why is included on the site. Choosing what to publish, and the omissions that entails, are also protected by free speech.
It’s not “censorship” when somebody decides to omit a software from a curated list over the developers’ horrible takes. See also Soapbox.
Edited to add: Free speech does not obligate anybody to boost or acknowledge subjects that they disagree with.
But the Lemmy project and specific instances are not so easily separated. From the archived mastodon thread:
lemmy.ml (the official Lemmy instance) resolves to the same IP address as lemmygrad.ml (the instance that contains the most disturbing material).
Lemmy.ml also federates with lemmygrad, and the devs advertise lemmygrad on their “join lemmy” site.
Do the Lemmy developers themselves run the lemmygrad.ml site? (Its main logo is a tank, incidentally.)
So yeah, newcomers are presented with a join-lemmy site that promotes Lemmygrad and Lemmy ML, both of which appear to be run by the Lemmy devs.
That pretty much makes it a Lemmy problem.
Well, since you’ve vocally criticised the developers and they haven’t bothered changing their ways, wouldn’t you agree they deserve to be gatekept?
On the other hand, it’s not for you to decide the criteria for what is included on jointhefediverse’s curated list. I personally think it is a perfectly reasonable judgement call they’ve made.
kbin.earth and other kbin instances have migrated to mbin. Only the domain names remain the same.
The important difference between a paid VPS subscription and a free account with <GENERIC EVIL BILLIONAIRE>s online services is how they are financed. With the latter, definitely assume you’re the product, specifically your data.
Any VPS provider should have a privacy policy, and as a user you should acquaint yourself with the securities they (claim to) provide. The fact that you pay even a pittance for their service should be an incentive not to monetise or snoop your data.
But yeah, short of an encrypted online backup service, I’d never put “very private data” online at all…
Most content you read is going to be long for a reason
This is something all of those auto-summarizers neglect to mention. Sometimes long is good, and activates understanding in a way you won’t get from a one-paragraph tl;dr version.
I wonder how Orbit would summarize this newsbyte? “Long is a bother. This better ❤️🤖”?
I verify my sessions. its a hassle, but it’s getting rarer and easier.
I’ve used matrix for the better part of a decade, and I get that reference.
That said, while the matrix crew have worked hard on the decryption issues, I’d much rather feel that particular pain on a federated network where I can change servers than be stuck with Signal if/when the single server’s policies turn evil.
That tells you all you need to know about my sources for firearm trivia! I don’t even remember watching DH2 😄
OT, and I’m usually not the type that comments with gun trivia, but
the cold metal of a glock
Wasn’t Glock famously made of ceramic polymer and became popular for evasion of metal detectors?
Sorry for the sidetrack, that single point irks me even if it’s way outside my wheelhouse.
Maybe even a note why this is worth clicking on, and not just a lazy teen spamming /all with anything they come across on a school night.
That may just be my preference 🤔
I ses the referrer hash in mbin, so that checks out.
Good talk. Get lost.